University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

The shadow over Temple House, which otherwise
might have flitted with the autumnal clouds, staid
motionless with Roxalana; she repelled every interest
which might aid her to drive it away, and no
longer ruled the house,—its contented and comfortdispensing
spirit. Chloe declared that her heavy,
even tread in the passage between her chair in the
green room and her bedside, was wearing the floor
away, as chained prisoners wore the floor of their
prisons. She was not only dumb, but she pretended
deafness, that it might not be expected of her to
attend to conversation going on in her presence.
Her conduct prevented sympathy or consolation
from reaching her by any means; even Virginia,
who sought her in the hope of breaking down the
barrier which shut her up with grief, obtained a reply
that disappointed the hope effectually.

“What do you do in an eclipse,” she asked,
“except to look at it through a piece of smoked
glass? Did you ever dream of interfering with the
laws which created the bodies to be eclipsed? Why
should you interfere with a mental eclipse? One is
as inevitable as the other. It is not necessary now

for you to penetrate the darkness which I am in;
wait till it surrounds you, then you will learn the
wisdom I practice. I have no fancy at all for looking
at any subject in your light; I have lost regard
for life.”

Neither would Tempe permit the friendly
advances which Virginia made. The perverse
creature behaved as if determined to quit the world,
also; all her fire seemed to have burned down, her
sharp spirit evaporated. Nothing was alive in her
but languor; too restless with its consuming influence,
she could neither lie down, nor sit up for any
length of time, but drooped over the chairs and settees,
and covered her face from the light with her arms.
She avoided solitude, was afraid of being left alone,
though she did not wish to be spoken to. She cried
in her sleep, but shed no tears when awake; made
mouths at her food, and tormented Chloe by long,
unwinking fits of staring, mute revery. While she
remained in this condition it was Chloe's business to
scold, expostulate, and coax, for there was nobody
else to do it; a healthful disturbance was thereby
kept up between them, though it cost Chloe tears of
vexation, and Tempe unwilling smiles.

“I am going to die,” she said once, when Chloe
made a dash at her, and cried out to her to speak.
“Wouldn't you like to see me in a white dress?”

“If you die,” Chloe replied, “I'll never do anything
for you as long as I live.”

Roxalana, who was present, gave an abrupt laugh,
so unexpected by Chloe, but which rejoiced her so

that she went into the kitchen, and sedately skipped
over the floor in acknowledgment of her approval of
this natural sign. It was during this period, while
Roxalana was wrapped in the cloud of her grief, that
Tempe approached her with symptoms of an affection
never manifested before. Roxalana made no
response; if she had, perhaps Tempe's pride and
aversion to the expression of sentiment would
have suppressed it. When Sebastian saw her on
the floor, resting her head against Roxalana's knees,
still and self-absorbed, he stopped as if before a
picture, and observed Tempe closely for the first
time in his life. He discovered in her an extraordinary
capacity for beauty; how was it possible to
develop it, and not really develop her into one of
those angels who make man's paradise murky and
lurid as the air of hell? Her brilliant, silky hair
was very long now; it spread low down on her
neck and brow in irregular lines, framing her colorless
complexion in dense black. She was all black
and white, except her well-cut lips, which clung
together like the double scarlet blossoms which grow
on the twigs of slender, dark-stemmed shrubs. He
turned on his heel abruptly, and sought Chloe.

“Is the little miss thinking of making her will?”
he asked.

“Marsy, Mr. Sebastian, she hasn't a mite of property.
Nobody will be the better off for her dying,
and only she will be the worse. I hope she won't go
till she has met with a change.”

“She may be on that road. What does it mean

that at this moment she is holding her dusky head
against her mother's knees?”

“If you expect me to account for anything that
happens here, I shall have to disappoint you.
'Pears to me, if this family can't be droll one way
they will another. I have noticed lately that Missis
Tempe has got the kink into her head of hanging
round her mother, but it seems to make no difference
to her. What are we coming to, if that woman is
going to sit in the shadow of darkness forever and
'ternally?”

Sebastian's head drooped; he sighed and muttered:

“Roxalana's feelings are immortal; mine are—
for the future; the past recedes like a mirage when I
endeavor to reach it. Even now, that child-angel
fades in the zenith,—a silver, impalpable shadow,
like the crescent moon vanishing in sunrise. Bah!
Chloe, it grows into your chilly season so fast; the
wild red leaves are blowing from the trees again,
and the air bites me,—but sweetly.”

“Bites? Mr. Sebastian, try a hair of the same dog
that bites the Gates folks; then you'll never be
chilly, nor hungry, and you won't ask any more
questions.”

“I have become so solitary since,” he continued,
looking into himself, and forgetful of Chloe, “that
Roxalana and Tempe together, in some incomprehensible
communion, make my sensations chime like
a bell, one against another. Do beings die to change
life for others? Does Death open avenues for one

to start from? Saints! and especially the hermit
saints! My solitude grows reverberating! The sand
which rolls and slides, grain by grain, at last chokes
the channel, and the tide boils in fury over. And
the dead wedge when driven into the live tree divides,
and crushes it. I think life here already differs,
even with the unchanging Argus, yet what can
he do? For the matter of that, what can I? What
if I try once more the old scenery? Bah! the
lights are out, the ballet has taken off its spangles;
besides, I cannot leave. No, I am bound,—twice,
thrice bound to this spot.”

He struck the floor with his boot, looked out of
his intense pupils at Chloe, who had indifferently resumed
her occupation, and whirled round to hasten
into Roxalana's presence again.

“My soul,” thought Chloe, “when his eyes are
fixed so, like coals lighted, he is the image of Judas
in Mr. Brande's picture of the Lord's Supper, which
an agent brought round. I must say, Judas was a
very handsome apostle. I remember that Mr. Brande
said at the time, that he had bought the picture to
head the list in Kent, but that it was an impious
thing to attempt the portrait of Jesus Christ; it was
not for sinful man to imagine him looking like a
man. And Virginia said,—well, I don't remember
what she did say, but he lectured her half an hour.
Plague on this little spider-legged pitcher, the silver
is so thin and worn I could prick it through and
through with a pin.”

“Roxalana,” cried Sebastian, standing before her,

“I want you. Come from that dark under-world.
I have lost hold of the anchors of Temple House;
where are they?”

“Well, Sebastian,” she answered, raising her heavy
eyes, “I am here, what will you have?”

“You do not attend to what I say. I want you,
my friend; give me my tranquility, which is leaving
me.”

“I asked what you would have. Get up, Tempe.”

Tempe obeyed, and sank upon a seat by the window.
Sebastian took her place.

“I perceive,” he whispered, “that she clings to you.
“Is it any temptation for you to love life again?”

Roxalana looked round at Tempe reflectively, and
a shade of surprise came into her face.

“Nothing tempts me,” she replied. “I do not
wish to be tempted.”

“Neither do I, yet I shall be; when the necessity of
being tempted exists in one, temptation approaches.”

“Resistance then is in vain,” she said, interested
in spite of herself.

“With me it is. The senses are plumed for flight;
when the breeze fans them they must ascend.”

“Resist temptation and it will flee from you,” she
quoted, looking absent again. “I have not looked
into the Bible much since I lived with Papa.”

“Is there a Bible in this house?” said Tempe, with
closed eyes, as if she were speaking in a dream.
“Grandpa used to quote that when I cried for his
lizards, and sea-horses, and plums.”

Roxalana's face flushed deeply and painfully; she

had never heard Tempe refer to those early days, so
long buried in her own mind that they were never
recalled. Was Tempe teaching her?

“And so you remember those things, Tempe?”

“Yes, and more. I could have had them all, you
know, but I never did yield to but one temptation,
mother—my evil disposition,—one of that fine flock
of the senses Sebastian speaks of. I suppose there
may have been one more temptation which I gave
in to, but I shall not mention it.”

There was defiance in her tone.

“Open your eyes, Tempe, for God's sake!” exclaimed
Sebastian. “I do not like statues with voices.”

“Poor statues! But statues are eyeless; I can't
open my eyes; they see nothing when they unclose.”

Roxalana looked pitifully at him, as if she would
have him excuse Tempe.

“Don't resist me,” he begged. “Roxalana, it
was your calm, cheerful philosophy, as well as the
friendship of Argus, that gave the bloom to my life
again, which more than the waves of Kent bay had
washed off. See, I am only thirty years old; am I
to have no reward for adding my years to the years
under this roof? Have you thought how strong and
skillful must be the wall which a man like me must
build between himself and the storms of the passions.
Before you and Argus they must not break
in. Look at me.”

She obeyed him, and laid her hand gently on his
shoulder, for he was kneeling beside her like a child.

Tempe shuddered as if she were in an ague;—

they had forgotten her! Why should she ever open
her eyes? Why not fall out of the high window,
and disappear with other miserable atoms of dust beneath
it?

“Look into my face,” continued Sebastian, “what
is coming? Do you believe me as incredibly simple
as yourself? And yet you must, for you accept the
strange beings round you for just what they appear.
Let me ask, though, once more, if I may not be
yours? `The blow,' you say. I know that, but
the other blows,—can you stand against those?”

She gave him her hand, but there was no light in
her countenance.

“Begin, dear,” he went on, “to hide the bruise in
your heart. Alas, we must have refuge, and be
healed. Now Argus—”

“Argus,” she interrupted reproachfully,—“how is
Argus? I shall never know till I ask him, and then
he will make merry.”

“Argus is well, ”exclaimed Tempe, “he is on the
lawn, knocking the ashes from the end of his cigar,
with the same equanimity that he formerly knocked
sailors overboard. Don't trouble yourself about
Argus, mother; the air and a loaf of bread, his cigar
and the bench under the elms, suffice the wants
of that lofty iceberg. Why he ever drifted into this
temperate climate is as much of a mystery as some
other driftings are.”

But Roxalana did look troubled; she went to the
window and looked at Argus steadfastly. He was
the picture of indifference and laziness; his legs were

crossed, his shoulders slouched, and he puffed his cigar
slowly, as if it were one of the last efforts he
might be expected to make.

“That man,” she said with some animation, “is
dressed in a nankin suit, and it is October—does he
know it?” She sighed, and turned back. “What
were you about to say, Sebastian? I can guess,
though, but I believe you may be mistaken.”

“Would he speak to you as I have spoken?”

“He never demands anything.”

“It is only a Spanish fashion to demand,” Tempe
remarked; “the Gates family neither demand, nor
require, anything.”

Sabastian made an abrupt movement to wards her
and retreated. “The little puss stretches out her
claws once more,” he said.

“Tempe, can't you hold your tongue?” asked her
mother.

“I can,” she answered, “but have no idea of doing
so.”

“I meant at first to say, Roxalana,” continued Sebastian,
“that Argus ignores what we call the inner
voice; consequently he is able to notice no correspondence
between that and the voices from the life
around him; he chooses to suffer, and enjoy, on another
basis.”

She shook her head, and doubtfully twisted herhands.

“The inner voice,” she repeated, “what is it? It
there were no pressure from the external, should we
ever hear it? I never do, in any event. I hope

you understand Argus. He is a peculiar man—entirely
different from you, Sebastian; I am glad of it, for
you. Go out to him; he has been alone some time.”

Sebastian instantly left her. As soon as he shut
the door Tempe opened it again, and followed him
to the lawn, and Roxalana was alone. In a few minutes
she went to the window, and contemplated the
group under the elms. Tempe, her arms hid under
a shawl, sat at the end of a bench, meditating on the
tree tops, or watching the atmosphere, for her head
was cast upwards, and her eyes roved. Sebastian
was smoking beside Argus, who remained in the
same position as when she looked at him before.

The afternoon sun, dipping over the lawn, tinged
the fading grass, and the brown leaves scattered over
it, with a yellow light; the pale, blue sky was cloudless,
and the motionless elms stood against it, still
green, though their leaves fell constantly, shattered
at heart by the poison of decay. A distant bell, from
some belfry in the town, was ringing. It was as if
a moment had arrived when it was necessary to
rouse the mind from a natural reflection mirrored
there by the Spirit of Autumn, that man and his belongings
are eternally vanishing,—sinking behind a
dark horizon,—the mysterious boundary of his
mind, beyond which lie visions—nothing more.

A flood swelled up from Roxalana's breast, and
broke into tears which blistered her eyelids; sobs
sounding like the growl of an animal at bay, stifled
and stopped her breath. Still she kept her eyes wide
open upon the scene before the window,—half thinking

out her struggle, half allowing it to work out by
its own law. It had come to her that day, and Sebastian's
appearance and words had strengthened the
idea,—that the capacity of choosing her old life
must now be made possible. To do so, however, the
chain of memory and association which bound her
must be broken; the dead, an everlasting curse and
reproach to her springs of being, could not exist
with the living, and her faith and enjoyment in
them. Which should she choose? Take up life,
and live resolutely, with freedom? Or should she
fear and despise it, keeping her heart at the gates of
loss and annihilation?

It appeared as if the group on the lawn were waiting
for her pending decision, they remained so fixed and
silent. The sun sank below the garden wall; the sky
changed; red and purple vapor, rough like surf, and
peaked like a mountain chain, rose round it; a swift
wind swept over the bay, bringing the noise of the tide
into the elms, whose boughs were suddenly and wildly
shaken. Some autumn birds, joyous in the great scene
above, below, the hemisphere of fiery, heaping, driving
cloud and rushing air, and the hemisphere of swaying
forests, the dark rolling bay, town, hill, and fields—
flew overhead with a loud twitter. Tempe followed
their flight, and Roxalana, still watching, involuntarily
raised her head also. With that strange
superstition which belongs to naturally faithless
natures, she instantly believed that the birds were
bearing her troubles away. The struggle was over.
Pale, and with an uncertain gait, she went out to

join those with whom she had taken lot again, to do,
or say—she knew not what. Sebastian rose in
astonishment when he saw her coming down the
steps, bareheaded and smiling; but Argus, who
knew her so well, only half turned his face towards
her.

“I noticed those birds,” she said; “have they not
colonized in the poplars?”

“No,” answered Argus; “they were a belated
party, and do not belong here.”

“Which way is the wind?”

“As if you didn't know, mother,” said Tempe,
looking at her with curiosity.

“Can't you let your mother ask whatever question
she pleases?” said Argus. “The wind shall be
which way you please, Roxalana, but it will blow to-night,
and I doubt whether we have many leaves to
sit under after this.”

She looked up into the elms, and an expression of
the old content came into her voice.

“How beautiful they still are!” she said.

The tone of her fine voice struck Argus with a regret;
how should he pass back, and live over the
days when that tone was habitual with her?

Sebastian took her hand, and drew her down the
path.

“When have you looked over the gate?” he said
thanking her with his eyes.

“Mother,” called Tempe, “you are bareheaded
and beyond the trees; you will feel the wind.”

Roxalana put her hand to her head.

“So I am, Sebastian.”

“Oh, my poor Roxalana, I see now that your hair
is gray.”

“But yours is not.”

“Give me your shawl, Tempe,” said Argus; “I
will take it to her. Now run into the house; let me
see two miracles to day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Water turned to wine.”

“Nonsense, uncle Argus. But how funny,—this
is the second time I have heard something from the
Bible to-day.”

“Trollop, you ought to keep one under your pillow,
and read it every night. What did you hear?”

“`Resist temptation, and it will flee from you.'
Do you read the Bible in your bedroom?”

“Who is tempted?”

“Nobody now, but somebody will be.”

“The child begins to feel the pangs of experience!
Run into the house; your hair will blow away.”

“I wish it would blow through my head, a current
of cool air, uncle Argus, intersecting it, would
be an advantage; but I suppose I may not expect
anything to penetrate it.”

He gave her a curious look.

“How would you like a surprise, Tempe?”

“Oh, I am surprised.”

“At what?”

With a timid gesture, she pointed at Sebastian.
Argus meditated a moment, and then said sharply,
“There is nothing to surprise in him, I assure you.”

“I know better; he is full of those instincts you
know nothing about.”

“Gracious Peter!”

“You may give one of your round-the-world
aughs, or sneers, it will be still the same with me
I feel an energy from him to-day, I am in a savage
sympathy with him, and I should like to pain him
too.”

“Go in.”

“So I will, when I get ready.”

“There's malaria somewhere round us; we are
getting upside down. It is the style of his face
makes you think so; the Spaniard inevitably suggests
love and revenge, but there is nothing of the
sort in Sebastian. I wish you would let me alone,”
replied Argus, a little confused.

“The man shall love me,” said Tempe haughtily,
rising, and moving towards the house; and Argus
went to the gate with an anger he had never felt for
Tempe till now.

“When you have viewed this rocky, romantic
pass,” he said, “you had better go back; Chloe will
be waiting with tea.”

“Who cares?” replied Roxalana.

Argus laughed, and exchanged a glance with Sebastian,
who nodded gravely, and made a gesture
which signified gratitude for the change in her.

“The kitchen chimney smokes,” said Argus mischievously.

“It does not,” she replied; “it never did. Come,
let us go in and see how much fire there is,—that
will decide.”